Deep drought fueling White Mountains forest fire that has reached historic scale

On Thursday night, while crews from across the country battled a wildfire in the dense woods of the White Mountain National Forest, residents of nearby communities and officials with the U.S. Forest Service crowded into the Shelburne Town Hall.

The blaze, which according to officials grew to a peak of nearly 1,000 acres since it began on Sunday but was reduced to 856 acres as of Thursday night, is highly unusual for the region.

“We’re not used to fires of this size here in New England. This is, unofficially, the largest fire in the White Mountain National Forest’s history since its creation,” said Derek Ibarguen, forest supervisor.

Drought conditions during the last two years have made the forest much more flammable than it would be under average conditions, said Ryan Hughes, incident commander with the Forest Service, during the meeting.

About 40% of New Hampshire, including much of Coös County, is currently experiencing moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Last year saw drought conditions stretch from what became New Hampshire’s driest summer on record into the winter.

At the site of the Wild River fire, which is burning just miles from the Maine border and downtown Shelburne, moisture that would ordinarily keep fire from spreading through leaf litter and the ground is depleted, Hughes said.

“That (moisture) is just not there this year,” he said. 

The near-annual cycles of intense drought that have affected New Hampshire in the past decade are linked to climate change, which is causing increasingly intense weather. That includes longer stretches of the hot, dry days that contribute to drought conditions.

In the decades before the White Mountain National Forest was created, large forest fires frequently tore through the region, often due to large-scale timber harvests that left piles of dry, flammable fuel throughout the forest and introduced spark-making machinery and trains to the forest.

Drought raises the stakes of New Hampshire’s relationship to fire

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The creation of the national forest and changes in logging practices brought an end to that period. But now, New Hampshire’s relationship to fire seems to be changing again. With drought increasingly common, some researchers worry that climate change is making wildfire a more urgent threat to New Hampshire and the Northeast. 

At the community meeting on Thursday night, one attendee described seeing ash floating through the air downtown.

“I thought I was seeing things,” he said. “…That’s not good.”

Androscoggin District Ranger Josh Sjostrom said the fire was unlike what he had seen in the region before.

“We’re not really accustomed to this. I grew up here in Shelburne, and to imagine this happening 20 years ago could be jarring,” he said. 

Other residents asked officials whether evacuations would be necessary and whether any structures were threatened.

As of Thursday night, the fire was about two miles from the nearest private land, and the Forest Service did not believe any structures were in danger, Hughes said. 

Several teams of wildland firefighters, smoke jumpers, aircraft operators and engine crews were making progress on the fire, he said. But he stressed that certain weather conditions would need to be met before the fire could be fully extinguished,

“Just to be brutally honest with everybody, it’s so much ground to cover and so much challenging terrain that it’s going to take a season-ending event,” he said, like multiple inches of rain or a snowstorm, before the fire is fully out. 

Forest Service firefighters from around the nation will remain in the area indefinitely, Sjostrom said. 

“They’ll be around for a while, so welcome them into our community, because they’re going to be here to keep this in check,” he said.